Four Keys to the Enterprise Cloud

A Neovise Customer Advisory Report

2010 Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Event Summary
On August 24, 2010, newScale, rPath and Eucalyptus Systems announced an integrated technology platform that will provide an on-ramp to private and hybrid cloud computing in the enterprise. The technology combination is designed to help businesses achieve maximum IT agility through cloud computing, integrating infrastructure for private and hybrid clouds with enterprise IT self-service and system automation. As a preferred delivery partner, MomentumSI will bring enterprise IT organizations self-service private and hybrid clouds built on top of the

Background
As always, IT organizations are under pressure to deliver. They must meet the needs of the business organizations they support, while ensuring security, privacy, governance and other standards are met. At the same time, cloud computing has emerged as an approach to IT which can dramatically improve both efficiency and agility. While the benefits of cloud computing are complementary to the fundamental mission of IT, there is fear whether real or imagined that using public cloud services will put IT, and therefore the business, at risk. To ease these concerns, yet still capture the benefits of cloud computing, enterprise IT organizations have become increasingly interested in deploying their own internal clouds (often called private clouds). At a high level, the idea is to combine the elasticity of the cloud technology with the control of private resources. However, there are a couple catches. First, private clouds are essentially built, not bought. You

Only the most sophisticated

organization must provide it. Of course only the most IT organizations can build a sophisticated IT organizations can build a private cloud private cloud from scratch. from scratch. Instead, most rely on various forms of commercial software designed to deliver cloud infrastructure services. They also rely on consultants who have direct experience in cloud deployments. This is all good, but there is still more to do. The second catch has to do with running or managing the private cloud. Once it is available, the approved for accessing which services? How do I control and approve that access? How do I move my applications to the cloud? How do I update applications in the cloud? How can I Unfortunately, most commercial software today focuses on providing an elastic infrastructure without fully resolving the questions listed above.

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The good news is that these two challenges first building and then effectively managing the private cloud are not insurmountable. In fact, there are Four Keys to the Enterprise Cloud which address them: 1. 2. 3. 4. Self-service Automation Elasticity Integration

Further, it is these same four keys to the enterprise cloud which newScale, rPath, Eucalyptus Systems and MomentumSI have come together to provide. Building and managing a private cloud is now within reach.

Value Proposition
The core elements of this integrated technology platform can be summarized as follows:
Self-service: Standardized, ready-to-order services that simplify the interface between IT and lines of business, while ensuring proper governance. Elasticity: Elastically provisioned and de- provisioned compute capacity in the data center, driven by changing priorities and fluctuations in demand. Integration: Best practices, adoption model and implementation services for making the transition to self-service, private and hybrid clouds. Automation: On-demand infrastructure, application and business service offerings that can be deployed across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Once again, other solutions be a cloud without elasticity, it is the other elements of this solution that make it something more than an infrastructure cloud. Another important point on the capabilities of this solution is its support of the hybrid cloud model. Rather than limiting infrastructure usage to servers within the enterprise, this solution supports cloud-bursting. When needed and only if desired, additional compute resources can be provisioned from a public cloud such as Amazon EC2.

Target Customers
This initiative is specifically targeted at enterprise IT organizations that want to transform their IT departments into internally-managed versions of a public cloud service. It is also applicable to federal and state government IT organizations. It is not meant for hosting providers to use in developing public cloud services.

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Impact Assessment
Customers
IT Impact: Business Impact:

Competition
Short Term: Long Term: Other vendors are primarily competing with individual components. This combined solution enables IT organizations move higher on the maturity curve and go well beyond infrastructure elasticity. Short term, this coalition has produced something which Neovise had not yet seen in the cloud computing market. Longer term, other vendors will likely work together on similar joint solutions. However, this is a strong group of players with a head start.

Prospective customers should find this combined solution far more complete than existing solutions which are used to build internal, private clouds. IT organizations should gain significant new capabilities as well as higher levels of maturity from each element of the solution. Business organizations should experience improved access to IT services, greater responsiveness to IT requests, and lower capital investment in IT over time.

Plus and Minus

Plus: A more complete solution. It addresses private cloud holistically up the stack from infrastructure to applications to self-service. Also extends to hybrid cloud computing. Plus: Outstanding product offerings individually even better together. Plus: Adopt cloud computing more rapidly while raising process and technology maturity. Minus: There is a tremendous amount to consume in this solution. Roll out plans should be designed accordingly.

Customer Advisory
Neovise strongly advises most enterprise organizations not to attempt building private clouds from scratch. Instead, use complete solutions and / or best of breed components. When building a private cloud, keep the Four Keys to Enterprise Cloud in mind: self- service, automation, elasticity and integration. Be sure consider your future needs which will likely include hybrid as well as private cloud computing.

2010 Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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About Neovise Neovise delivers essential knowledge and guidance to key members of the IT community including IT leaders, IT staff, business executives, technology vendors, systems integrators, and service providers. While each of these roles has a separate focus, they all require value added information and advice in order to formulate winning strategies and make optimal decisions. Based on decades of industry experience and ongoing market analysis, we are your trusted, independent source of Business Driven IT InsightTM. For more information, visit www.neovise.com.

2010 Neovise, LLC. All Rights Reserved.